August 17, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - Urban farmer Curtis Stone who runs a successful urban agriculture business as well as workshops and free online videos to help others join the urban agriculture revolution, has recently put out a very positive message regarding GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in the context of big-agricultural monopolies and what we can do about it.

His underling message is to stop being paralyzed by fear and to start making a real difference by simply getting out from behind our computers, getting our hands dirty, and making with our own two hands the sort of world we want to live in.

He says so as part of a tangible movement producing alternatives to big-ag and big-retail that have turned the tide against monopolies and have given people a chance at building their own value for themselves and their communities.

While his message was specifically about GMOs and the agricultural sector, his wisdom easily carries over to virtually all other aspects of modern socioeconomic activity.

Break the Wheel

It is a positive message that has been gaining traction as more and more people become frustrated with circular political debates, endless protests, and paralyzing fearmongering, all while the same handful of powerful interests benefit - far removed from the chaos they sow below.

Abusive monopolies are so, simply because they have the wealth and influence to be abusive. This wealth is gained by millions of people in the United States and around the world paying them for their goods and services month-to-month. This concentration of wealth was not accomplished overnight, and it will not be undone in an election, with the passage of a bill, or anything less than its undoing through decentralization and localization.

Reducing the wealth and influence of monopolies - regardless of industry - thus reducing their ability to abuse, requires directing our monthly income away from them and toward local alternatives.

Money channeled to local farmers around the world instead of a handful of ag-giants and retailers, means the wealth these current monopolies use to lobby, manipulate public perception, bribe, and otherwise coerce public policy with, no longer exists. It is wealth through local entrepreneurship that can be used as local people see fit.

Local alternatives create a decentralized version of the centralized monopoly they seek to replace, meaning that no single business has in its own hands the sort of wealth and influence existing monopolies currently enjoy. This creates a better balance of power and deters the sort of abuses excessive disparity invites.

Curtis Stone and others encourage people to create value and wealth for themselves instead of obsessing over political discourse, ideology, and fear. And the more people who choose self-empowerment over circular conflict, the more actual leverage we will have individually and collectively when actors such as agricultural monopolies, tech giants, or the defense industry attempt to coerce a people, a nation, or even a world into action that benefits none but a handful of monopolies.

A literal cure for cancer has been funded by charity, stolen by big-pharma, to be dangled over the head of the dying for profit.

August 2, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Impropriety among big-pharmaceutical corporations has ranged from multi-billion dollar bribery rackets, to marketing drugs to patients for uses they were never approved for by regulators, to covering up known dangerous side-effects of medications they produce and sell.

More recently, big-pharma has been embroiled in a series of price-gouging controversies over equipment and treatments. This includes the hijacking of and profiteering from a revolutionary new treatment called gene therapy.

Gene therapy, the process of re-engineering human cells to either include missing DNA to cure genetic conditions or to arm the immune system to seek and destroy disease, has been the latest hopeful technology scooped up and plundered by big-pharma.

Gene therapy promises a single shot cure to many of the diseases that have confounded humanity the most - everything from diabetes to cancer, to blindness, deafness, and even various effects of aging.

At least two treatments using gene therapy have been approved for European markets.

A third that has proven in clinical trials to provide permanent remission for leukemia patients who were unresponsive to chemotherapy, appears to be close to FDA approval.

The Literal Cure for Cancer, Dangled Over the Dying

While the treatment - even under experimental conditions - costs approximately $20,000 to produce, pharmaceutical giant Novartis has swooped in and industry experts anticipate a markup leaving the price tag between $300,000-600,000.

Dr. June said that producing engineered T-cells costs about $20,000 per patient — far less than the cost of a bone-marrow transplant. Scaling up the procedure should make it even less expensive, he said, but he added, “Our costs do not include any profit margin, facility depreciation costs or other clinical care costs, and other research costs.”

Novartis has not disclosed the price for its therapy, but analysts are predicting $300,000 to $600,000 for a one-time infusion. Brad Loncar, whose investment fund focuses on companies that develop immunotherapy treatments, hopes the cost does not prompt a backlash. “CAR-T is not the EpiPen,” he said. “This is truly pushing the envelope and at the cutting edge of science.”

But it isn't Novartis that's "pushing the envelop," or at "the cutting edge of science." Charity-funded university researchers are.

Fronts representing big-oil and big-auto are spearheading a widening PR campaign targeting electric car manufacturer and alternative energy company Tesla. May 26, 2017 (LocalOrg) - Alternative energy company Tesla which includes US-based electric car development and production, battery production, and now also includes residential solar panel and battery systems previously under SolarCity, represents a simultaneous threat to several cornerstones of Western corporate-financier monopolies.

Openly seeking to replace big-oil and big-auto, it was only a matter of time before Tesla's co-founder, CEO, and product architect Elon Musk attracted the negative attention of both of these deeply rooted and corrupt industries.

The genuine enthusiasm for Tesla and its products versus the paid-for media campaign to obstruct or even reverse Tesla's influence on energy and transportation has been a see-sawing battle unfolding just beneath the surface.

More recently, attempts to further complicate Tesla's US-based manufacturing facility in California have been spearheaded by the United Automobile Workers (UAW), an organization that attempts to pass itself off as a labor union.

Part of this campaign has included several "investigations" carried out by both the corporate media and various organizations like Worksafe - an opaque organization claiming to advocate workplace safety - which recently published a report regarding worker safety at Tesla's California factory. The report was widely promoted across the corporate media in what appears to be a concerted attempt to single out and undermine Tesla.

The United Auto Workers has sent organizers to help employees organize Tesla Inc.’s electric-car plant, a move that -- if successful -- would give the union the presence it’s long sought beyond legacy U.S. automakers’ factories. A group of Tesla workers have contacted the union to seek assistance organizing, and the UAW is in discussion with them, Dennis Williams, the union’s president, told reporters during a roundtable Thursday in Detroit. He said union organizers have received complaints about long hours and potentially unsafe conditions at Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California.

UAW is a Wall Street Trojan Horse Disguised as a Labor Rights Advocate

While UAW poses as a labor union, in reality, UAW is nothing of the sort.

It is an American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) affiliate, with AFL-CIO representing perhaps the most successful Wall Street-devised attempt to date to infiltrate, co-opt, and commandeer legitimate labor unions and movements not only in the United States, but through funding and association with the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (NED), all across the entire planet.

Tesla is voluntarily recalling 53,000 Model S and Model X electric vehicles because of problems with the parking brake. As was the case for Tesla’s last recall, the company is blaming someone else for the issue. Specifically, the electric parking brakes installed on the EVs “may contain a small gear that could have been manufactured improperly by our third-party supplier.”

It also notes that:

Quality control issues have plagued the young carmaker. Both the Wall Street Journal and Consumer Reports lambasted the Model X, and many electric motors in early Model S sedans appeared unable to last more than 60,000 miles.

What Ars Technica and other publications have failed to do, however, is put the Tesla recall into context. According to a 2016 U.S. News article titled, “The Biggest Car Recalls in History,” such context is provided.

Not only have other car manufacturers faced recalls many times larger (with millions of cars recalled at a time), the largest recall in automotive manufacturing history involved faulty parts used by multiple auto companies supplied by a third-party company, not unlike Tesla’s current recall.

U.S. News would report:

More than two dozen automakers were forced to recall close to 70 million vehicles in the biggest auto recall in U.S. history after receiving reports of a defect in airbags from Japanese supplier Takata. Honda recalled the most vehicles – more than six million – but Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, Nissan, Mazda, and others sent letters to owners while grappling with a supply shortage.

However, as Ars Technica pointed out, Tesla is a “young automaker,” while other companies have been established for decades, facing multiple gargantuan recalls in their respective histories, and still facing them regularly despite what many analysts have claimed Tesla lacks, “experience” with quality control.